Arsenal board fume over lack of ambition claims

There is frustration that the attacks from Van Persie and major shareholder Alisher Usmanov should come so early during a transfer window in which they have actually been quite active.

"Lukas Podolski has 100 caps for Germany and Olivier Giroud was the top scorer in France," one source told the Telegraph. "We have great young players coming through and we improved to finish third last year. What money we have is available to spend. We are doing everything we can to succeed."